by Cindy Dees
Ruala disengaged his hand from hers. With a last glance down at her bum leg, he stepped around her and allowed the CEO to herd him away from the geeky computer programmer with no social graces.
And then her knees started to shake like jelly. Right there in the middle of the hallway. Trembling until they were in real danger of collapsing. The walls began to close in, suffocating her. She had to get out of here. An urge to run away from the man behind her became so overpowering it was all she could do to walk to the front exit without breaking into a run.
Thankfully, she had a spare car key on the ring of keys in her pocket that went to her computer, desk and filing cabinets at Fasco. Clutching the thumb drive convulsively, she paused impatiently for a retinal scan on the way out of the building. One last swipe of her magnetic ID card and she was logged out.
She all but ran outside, which was a trick with her knee threatening to lock up with every jarring step she took. The titanium and plastic joint was primarily designed with walking in mind. Light-headed with fear, she stumbled off the curb but righted herself awkwardly and lurched toward her car. Sweat beaded between her shoulder blades and rolled down her back maddeningly. Her neck tingled as if Ruala was staring right at it, choosing his shot behind her. Toying with her. Enjoying her terror. Doggedly, she headed for her car. Please don’t let him kill me. Please don’t let him kill me….
Almost there. Her light-headedness turned to outright dizziness. Breathe, you idiot. Passing out now would be incredibly stupid.
A male voice called out her name behind her.
Oh God. Not now. She looked over her shoulder and waved a hello at the biggest flirt in the whole company. He insisted on massaging her shoulders or, worse, hugging her every time he saw her, no matter how inappropriate it was. Please, not today! She just wanted to get in her car and get as far away from here as she could.
The flirt started to walk toward her. She called out something about being late for an appointment and, fumbling frantically, jammed her car key at the door lock. She missed the first time, her hands were shaking so bad. Finally a click and the door swung open. She banged her shin in her haste, but slid behind the wheel before Romeo could come over and put a half nelson on her. She locked her door for good measure.
It took three tries to get her key in the ignition, but finally, the engine turned over. Slowly, now. Carefully. It would do no good to kill herself in the process of running away from Ruala. She guided her car out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Profoundly relieved, she pointed her car toward home.
As the Fasco building grew small in her rearview mirror, she fished around in her purse and found her cell phone. Alternating looking at the road and her phone, she punched out a long series of numbers she’d memorized years ago in case of an emergency.
“Go ahead,” said an anonymous male voice at the other end of the line.
“Is Colonel Foley available?” she asked.
“He’s in a meeting. Could be there for some time. If it’s an emergency, I can get a message to him, though.”
In his world, her dilemma probably didn’t constitute a crisis. Besides, the idea was to check the sniper’s identity without rocking the boat too hard. “When he gets a moment, could you ask him to call Tex Monroe’s sister, Susan? Tell him I may have a problem and could use his help.”
SUSAN JERKED AWAKE, her heart pounding like a row of Indian war drums. Silence lay heavily around her, as stifling as a thick wool blanket. She was just wired because Colonel Foley hadn’t called back yet. Come on. Call! Her bedside clock said it was 2:00 a.m. The colonel certainly wouldn’t contact her before tomorrow morning. She might as well just try to go back to sleep. Yeah, right.
Shadows wrapped around the room, clothing it in menace. She made out vague outlines of furniture, but the heavy blinds on her windows did their job well.
A scraping noise sounded. Not the slightest bit like a house squeak. It was more like…like a chair dragging across the floor. Downstairs.
Oh. My. God.
Somebody was down there. Certainty exploded across her brain. It had to be Ramon Ruala.
Her heart beat triple-time, racing like a jackrabbit running for its life. She looked around in the dark for a weapon. Nothing heavy and club-like in sight. Her cane was too light and whippy to do the job. What was she thinking? She couldn’t attack a killer with a stick! She’d hide under her bed. Like that wasn’t an obvious place for Ruala to check.
Call the police. She picked up the telephone on the nightstand beside her bed.
Silence.
Total silence. As in no dial tone.
Either it was the most ill-timed phone outage in history, or the intruder had cut the line. And she was alone in the middle of five thousand acres of isolated ranch. Terror roared through her, leaving her shaking uncontrollably. She should’ve listened to everyone who’d told her she was crazy to live way out here by herself.
Her cell phone. It was in her purse. On the counter in her bathroom. She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the ever-present cane by the nightstand and pushing herself upright. She paused, giving her bad knee a moment to adjust to bearing her weight. More than once she’d taken a spill by bounding thoughtlessly out of bed. She would think after a decade of living with her injury she would remember it at some level of long-term memory. But her subconscious denial persisted.
She limped gingerly across her bedroom to the bathroom, easing around the spot in the floor that squeaked. She fished the cell phone out of her purse and punched out 911. An operator asked efficiently for the nature of the emergency and the address.
Susan whispered frantically, “My name’s Susan Monroe. I live on the Flying M Ranch on County Line Road. There’s an intruder in my house. Send the police!”
A brief pause, then, “They’re on their way, ma’am. It’ll take about fifteen minutes for them to get there. Do you have a bathroom with locks on its doors?”
“Yes. I’m there,” Susan replied under her breath.
“Lock yourself in and sit tight.”
“Got it,” she replied. By the glow of the night-light by her sink, she caught a glimpse in the big mirror of the thick, ugly scar that trailed from the side of her neck down across her chest toward her heart. She still shuddered at how close she’d come to dying from that wound. The doctors said if the bullet had gone millimeters in either direction…
She felt that close to death again right now. If Ruala killed her tonight, what she knew about his new identity would die with her. She had to get in touch with someone before he found her! She dialed the Blackjacks headquarters for the second time that day.
“Go ahead,” a male voice said in her ear.
She whispered frantically, “My name’s Susan Monroe. I need to talk with Colonel Foley right away. And it’s an emergency.”
“One moment, ma’am. I’ll patch you through to him.”
There was a squeak down the hall and she leaped to the second bathroom door that led out into the hallway. Her knee protested, sending a streak of white-hot fury up her thigh. Frantically she verified the lock was in place. And froze.
From directly on the other side of the door she heard a low rumble of Spanish. She lurched when a second male voice answered the first. Dear God. There were two men! Ruala had help. She plastered herself against the wall beside the door, too petrified to move a muscle.
A quiet slide of footsteps on carpet signaled that the men had moved on down the hallway. A distinctive creak sounded. The bedroom door at the far end of the hall. She’d bet they were going to do a room-by-room search of this floor, starting at the far end and working their way back toward the stairs. They would discover the locked bathroom door in a few minutes, and then they’d find her.
Ruala wouldn’t hesitate to kick down the door or shoot it out to get to her. The 911 operator’s advice to lock herself in might work with a regular robber but not with him.
She had to get out of her
e.
The spacious bathroom’s walls closed in on her until it was no more than a tiny, airless cage. Its second-story window was too far above the ground for her to jump. It was out into the hallway and down the stairs, or else wait to be discovered and murdered. Gee, like that was a hard choice.
She heard voices in the background at the other end of the phone. A second male voice came on the line. He sounded like he’d just woken up. “This is Tom Foley. What’s the problem, Susan?”
She whispered frantically, “Someone’s in my house. Ramon Ruala has a new identity. He’s going by the name David Ford and came to Fasco to test fire a rifle. I think he recognized me.”
Another door squeaked open. That was right next door! She had to get going. “Sorry, got to go. He’s in the next room,” she whispered.
The colonel barked, “Get out of there. Run away. Hide if you can’t run. Don’t worry about getting lost. We can track down your cell phone signal. Keep the line open…”
Those were the last words she heard as she stuffed the cell phone, still connected to Blackjack Ops, in the shirt pocket of her cotton pajamas. She pressed her ear to the door and didn’t hear anything but blood rushing in her ears.
She took a deep breath, cracked open the door and peeked out into the dark hallway. It was still and silent. She could do this. Just a few steps to the stairs and then down and outside. Away from the house. Away from Ruala. To the welcome darkness of the night. Her shoulder blades tickled as imaginary bullets slammed into them, exploding her lungs and tearing out her heart.
Her heart beat so hard it hurt. Something bumped next door, and she bolted out into the hallway. In her panic she forgot her cane. But it wasn’t as if she was going back for the stupid thing.
She dared not run for it. Her leg collapsed every time she tried that. She hop-skipped as quickly and quietly as she could away from Ruala and toward the front stairs.
She almost made it. But then the fringe on the hall rug caught her right big toe. She pitched forward awkwardly. Her left leg swung out in front of her to stop the fall, but her bad knee jammed. Instead of cushioning her stumble, the stiff leg became a pivot point. She spun half-around on it and then fell backward, her arms flailing. Into space.
Oh God. The stairs.
CHAPTER TWO
Mac cracked one eye open infinitesimally and groaned in agony. Satan’s hellfire shot through his skull. Night had fallen outside. Shame coursed through him that he hadn’t even waited till suppertime to get stinking drunk.
To hell with sobriety. He lifted the whiskey bottle to examine its contents. Empty. Damn. Even drinking himself senseless hadn’t helped. Susan Monroe’s innocent, wounded eyes still haunted his dreams.
He’d been in Ops when her call came in yesterday afternoon, and the sound of her honey-sweet voice over the speakerphone had done him in. He’d come an inch from reaching over and taking the phone out of the communication specialist’s hand, to ask her what her problem was and if he could help. Hell, just to ask her how she was doing. If she ever thought of him the way he still thought of her.
But he’d promised Tex that he would leave Susan alone. Give her space to find a man who would be there for her, who wouldn’t hare off to war zones on a moment’s notice, and who wouldn’t be in constant danger of dying and leaving her a widow.
He’d gotten drunk on Jack Daniel’s that night, too. After he ripped out her heart, stomped all over it, and then watched her nearly die at the hands of Ferrare’s personal assassin, Ramon Ruala.
Ferrare was a man he’d love to get his hands on. An international crime boss who dabbled in everything from stolen art to terrorism. The Blackjacks had been after the bastard for years. But for what he’d ordered done to Susan—the guy needed to die for that.
Mac gripped the neck of the liquor bottle convulsively. God, he’d been a fool. Why had he followed Foley’s orders that fateful night, anyway? His boss told him she would be safer somewhere else, far away from their mission to capture Ferrare. And so, like a good little soldier, he’d followed orders to the best of his ability and run her off.
He’d been so head-over-heels in love with her he could hardly see straight. The thought of her in danger had damn near made him freeze up. And he couldn’t afford to do that when they jumped Ferrare and took him out. He could’ve at least gone easy on her when he drove her away from the op. But no. He’d done the job to the best of his ability and torn her heart out.
It wasn’t Tom’s fault that Susan had bolted right into the middle of the damned op when she’d fled. Nope. That was on him. He was the asshole who’d upset her so badly she hadn’t paid attention to where she was going.
Of course, he could’ve just told her the truth and asked her to leave for her own safety. But that had seemed too easy. Not likely to work. He’d been too damned inexperienced back then to realize that sometimes the easy way was best. It was a miracle she lived through the whole fiasco.
He would never forget the sight of Ramon Ruala walking right up to the driver’s side window of the surveillance van, looking in at Susan, then lifting that rifle and blasting at her from point-blank range. Mac would also never forget Susan covered in blood and moaning in pain as he pulled her out of that van. He’d lost it completely. Had to be dragged away from her himself.
He snorted in disgust. Dutiful soldier and damned fool that he was, he’d done such a great job of breaking Suzie’s heart and wrecking her life that he couldn’t ever go back to her, no matter how low on his belly he crawled.
Just his luck. No more whiskey left to drown his regrets. To drown himself. Thankfully, the liquor already in his system spun him away toward oblivion. For tonight. But one of these days he wasn’t going to win the fight to beat it all back. God help him when he lost.
Some hours later, Mac jerked awake, swearing. His skull pounded like little men with jackhammers were hard at work in there, doing their best to crack his head open. What in tarnation was that noise? Something high-pitched caterwauled incessantly in the background.
Damn! It was his cell phone. His work cell phone. He staggered to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen, following the source of the earsplitting noise.
“Yeah,” he growled into the receiver.
“Foley, here. Get into base, ASAP. The secure briefing room. We’ve got a situation.”
Aww, hell. He felt like death warmed over. He cleared his throat. “I’m on my way.”
He squinted at the clock on the stove—2:30 a.m. Why did the world always have to go to hell in a hand basket in the middle of the damned night? He tipped a jar of instant coffee over his mouth and poured the dry granules down his throat. He chased it down with a quart of water and headed for the closet and a uniform.
Mac made it to Blackjack Ops in under a half hour, but he was still the last to arrive. A handful of aspirin and more coffee, in liquid form this time, knocked back his hangover to manageable proportions. But he still felt like road kill.
His boss, Colonel Foley, nodded at him when he entered the room. “Seal the door. Everybody’s here, now.”
Mac pushed the heavy hatch into its soundproof casing. A green light went on over the doorframe, indicating the room was locked down and being bombarded with radio and electromagnetic waves to prevent eavesdropping.
He took a seat at the conference table beside Dutch, one of his fellow teammates. Howdy and Doc, two of the team’s other members, sat across from him.
A bulky rifle lay on the long table in front of his boss. Mac recognized it as the prototype of a high-tech sniper rifle The Blackjacks had acted as the military consultants for it as it was designed.
Were the Blackjacks finally going to be allowed to take the RITA rifle and its high-tech targeting system into the field to try it out? Tex Monroe, the Blackjacks’ absent member tonight, had gotten a chance to play around with the weapon in a South American jungle a few months back. Reported that it worked like a charm. Tex was on leave at the moment, helping with last minute details
for his upcoming wedding. Poor bastard. Not that his fiancée, Congresswoman Kimberly Stanton, was anything less than fantastic. But wedding planning? Talk about Tex losing his man card...
Colonel Foley opened a file folder lying on the table before him. Mac leaned forward intently as the adrenaline rush of picking up a new assignment hit him, and he reveled in the light, hungry feeling tingling through his gut.
Foley spoke without referring to the file. “This is classified at level Tango One, gentlemen.”
The tingling in Mac’s extremities became a storm of anticipation. That was the highest classification they dealt with. This mission was a big one.
The briefing continued. “You know the drill. Don’t reveal anything you hear in this room to anyone for any reason. No notes, no conversations among yourselves…”
Mac and the other men nodded impatiently.
Without further ado, the colonel said, “Less than an hour ago, our command post received this phone call.” Foley pushed a button on the audio-video console beside the table.
Mac listened as a clearly terrified woman whispered into the phone, reporting that her house had been broken into. Something about the timbre of her voice rang a bell, but he couldn’t put his finger on it before the tape continued. Like everyone else in the briefing room, he jolted when she murmured the name Ramon Ruala. He’d made it his personal mission to find and kill that bastard someday, but he had yet to make good on that silent promise to Susan.
He blinked when a series of heavy thuds abruptly came across the tape. It sounded like the woman had fallen down. Hard. Maybe down a flight of stairs. Then the sound of rushing footsteps and two men shouting in Spanish. The woman screamed.
Then a sharp crack of flesh on flesh. The woman cried out. Mac winced along with every other guy at the table. They were in a cold, violent business, but that didn’t mean they listened easily to a woman getting hit.
Another distinctive sound—the thud of a fist connecting with flesh.